I consider myself in a small group of intelligent Christians. (please don't let my murder of spelling and grammer on the board convince you I'm not intelligent, it's hyperlexia, I swear!)
If the name wasn't already taken by a religious group I don't affiliate myself with I would call myself a "Christian Scientist".
The biggest thing standing in the way of Chrisitans being intelligent and adaptive on the whole is the common roots nearly all Christian churches have in the the original monarchial church that became known as the Catholic church.
I was raised Baptist (one of the churches broken of from the Luthern Church which broke off from the Catholic Church). What I was taught at Baptist church I attended was to question everything with the exception of what is in the leather bound King James book. Okay, I studied the Leatherbound King James Book, which taught me to question everything. I did, the Leatherbound King James Book was not handed out on a stone tablet like the 10 commandments themselves, but assembled later by the Catholic church.
No where in the Leatherbound King James Book does it say that the earth is the center of the universe, that was Catholic dogma. The first chapter of Genesis pretty much parallels the scientific method, days are undefined in that context, and the book itself was a pre-writing hand me down that was eventually written down.
The Leatherbound King James Book is nice, but it's not all the old documentation. It's what was put together by the Catholic Church 1500 years ago minus the books specificaly written for dogma/strengthening the Catholic church purposes.
No where do I see a quote from God or Jesus saying the Leatherbound King James Book is the ultimate. There's a nice little adendum at the end of Revelations. Who put that in there?
Seems like the biggest thing the book conveyed was put your trust in God, observe the 10 commandments, get baptised, take communion, assemble in his name. No time table other than on the Sabath was given. Saturday or Sunday? Thats to be debated during the assembeling time, see trust in him.
The 10 commandments are stone set. The rest is up to study, debate, and putting your trust in him.
Dogma is what really makes Christians look like idiots to non-Christians. I think if we did away with "religions" and "churches" and assembled as Christians without the stone set beliefs drummed up by individual churches we would be a lot better off. |
